From Antognazza’s biography…

His interest in mining went far beyond simply doing his job for the Duke of Hanover. He was given control of the mines in Harz and did a lot of work managing them and designing equipment. But it seems everytime Leibniz travelled across Europe he went out of his way to visit mines.

He learnt enough Italian on his travels that he was able to understand it – there’s a story of his being on a ship during a storm and the crew debating throwing him overboard, so he produces a rosary and they think he’s a man of God and decide not to do it – but also to write letters in Italian.

He declined a post as the keeper of the Vatican library because he would have had to convert to Catholicism. Despite the previous story, Leibniz was actually a Lutheran.

The biography is very readable. At times it can be frustrating because it keeps jumping from one topic to another, but that’s actually a pretty accurate way to portray Leibniz’s interests. He seems to be fascinated by just about everything. The problem of trying to treat someone like this – and I had a similar problem, though on a much smaller scale, when I was writing my book on Henri Lefebvre – is how to treat the breadth of his interests while providing sufficient detail. This could have easily been a multi-volume project, with a lot more discussion of his ideas. But it’s over 600 pages as it is, and Antognazza generally strikes a good balance. As she says, there are plenty of works out there which treat specific aspects of his work in great detail.